“Compass says two hundred. Not far now,” I said, into the gloom.
We reached the second guardroom and it was almost identical to the last one, except there was no filing cabinet, only a table and chairs. This room was dusty though. No one had been in it for years.
We left soon after and met our first tunnel entrance.
“This one leads to the church,” Hannah remarked. “It should be sealed up still.”
“Yeah,” Morgan said. “Doesn’t look like the door’s been opened in a while. It’s rusty as hell.” He dragged his fingers over the wheel circle and the shards of metal and rust stuck to his finger.
“Okay, guys. Don’t bother with the orphanage tunnel to the left. We think if you go right, then right again you’ll end up in the tunnel which leads to the circular room. Be careful because there are store rooms along there, so be stealthy,” said Hannah.
“Okay,” I said, pointing the torch to the right.
“Rose?” Morgan whispered.
“What?”
He pointed to the earpiece.
“Oh, right,” I said and pressed it off.
“Now what?”
“This and he kissed me so sweetly and deeply I felt myself melting into him.
“What was that for?” I whispered when we broke away.
“I want to ask you something and I know you won’t want to do it.”
“Ask me what?” I frowned in confusion.
“Instead of us traipsing further, could you ...you know…use your gift, see if anyone’s actually down here?” he smiled a half-smile but I frowned.
I shook my head. “Morgan, I’m not sure I should. If it’s a trap, I don’t want to get caught.”
“I know. I don’t know how far away you can sense but we could still get back before anyone reached us.”
I paused at what he’d said. It would make sense but I was conflicted.
“It does make sense,” I sighed.
“So what’s stopping you?” he looked at me under his eye brows.
“You are. I’ve never used it in front of anyone that wasn’t my family. I haven’t even talked about it properly with Daisy.”
“It doesn’t matter. You could help us, it would save so much time,” he pleaded.
He was right and I knew it.
“You won’t think I’m a freak of nature?”
“Rose, all you Frost women are freaks of nature. Doesn’t change who you are in here,” he reached his palm out and touched my heart, then stroked my cheek softly, making my heart flutter.
I nodded, he’d won me over. “Okay, but don’t touch me while I’m doing it.”
“I won’t,” he stepped back to give me space.
I put the torch and compass back in the bag, emptying my hands and raising them each side of me. I closed my eyes and felt deep down into my body, drawing the tingling sensation up my arms and out through my fingers. I opened my eyes to see my silvery grey tendrils pushing out in front, touching, feeling their way forward, like a thousand strands of rope.
Further and further I pushed and I heard Morgan utter a “wow” into the space between us. All around my body was a whirl of silver light skipping in and out of me. Morgan had no use for his torch, because I lit up the corridor so brightly my whole body was like a new beacon of light.
“You’re so amazing,” Morgan said with awe.
“Shh, quiet please!” I whispered back as I felt forward. A void opened up on the right and I felt my way in, I could almost see into the room even though I stood six hundred metres away.
“I’m in the first store room. There’s nobody in it,” I said. I tried something new and sent a shard of light down the tendrils touching the room. I could see it more clearly now.
“What’s in it?” Morgan whispered tentatively. He shuffled from one foot to the other, without breaking his gaze.
“Just boxes on shelves. The boxes are old,” I tried to read the writing on the sides and sucked in a breath. I withdrew my silver ropes out, just in case.
“Tell me. What did you see?”
“There’s lots of ammunition. The store room is filled with ammunition, grenades, those bomb shells about a foot long are in wooden crates stuffed with straw. It’s a mini arsenal.”
“What else?”
Beads of sweat puckered on my forehead, the strain was beginning to hurt my upper arms, and my muscles began shaking with the extra work.
“I don’t know how much further I can go.”
“Just try.”
I touched something on the ground outside the second store room twenty metres further on the left. It was a blanket but had fresh blood encrusted into the fibres. I reached inside the room, almost smelling the air inside. It had the tangy smell of body odour, days old; a pot in the corner still had urine in the bottom. A human hand had gripped the wall, the sweat streaking down the old peeling paint.
I heard a noise, and faint voices whispered and drew nearer. I immediately withdrew my tendrils, pulling them further back, dulling the glow until they swarmed around me and shot back up into my body.
I collapsed on the floor and puffed lungs of air in and out.
“Rose, are you all right?” Morgan whispered.
“Someone’s coming.”
“How far?”
“A long way off. We can get to the first room if we run.”
He grabbed my hand, pulling me forward as we ran in the dim light. He still held his torch but the light flickered back and forth as he ran, leaving no solid light to guide us.
We made it to the ammunition filled store room and closed the door quietly, standing behind it.
“Can you hear them?” he whispered in my ear.
I shook my head. I heard nothing, no footsteps, and no voices.
A faint tickle itched on the inside of my skull and I jabbed my fingers to my temple to push the pain away.
“Please, not now.”
Morgan looked concerned but held his tongue. I twisted my earrings around to see if the metal would dull the pain and it did.
“Let’s look in the other room,” I whispered and moved back through the doorway to the corridor. Morgan followed as we went in, watching his step around the blanket.
“Someone was here recently. There’s a hand mark down the wall, and a pee pot, recently emptied.” I pointed to the corner as he shone his torch.
“You can tell all that?”
“Yeah.”
The torchlight lit the room, along the walls, then to the ceiling until Morgan’s hand stayed on the back of the door.
“Rose, look.”
Scratched into the wooden partition were the words “God help me,” then the initials “GP.”
“Graham Portway.”
“Jez’s dad?”
“Yes, he was here. Can you tell how recent he could have been here?”
“Not really. I’m not that experienced with what I see or find, from the smell I’d say he left a couple of days ago.”
“Do you want to try again with your gift?”
“I’ll try, but I can’t promise anything,” I breathed in and then stepped from the room.
Closing my eyes again, I felt my gift tug out of my fingers as if it wanted to be set free. It drew away from me as my body flickered with light, paler now. I pushed forward, my body was tiring but I kept on, touching the walls, feeling for any life. The tunnel ended and I felt either way. A giant void was ahead and I sensed…something, or someone, I couldn’t tell.
I fell to my knees exhausted, and Morgan leaned me against the wall and held me up.
“I’m sorry, Rose, I didn’t mean to push,” he whispered with deep regret, he sat down and leaned forward as I rested my weight on him fully.
The tingling in my arms wouldn’t subside and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t pull my silver ropes fully into my arms. I still flickered dimly now. My eyes were heavy and I couldn’t stay awake. As the rapid footfalls of someone approaching sounded in my ears, I fell into a soft s
leep on Morgan’s shoulder, and was out fully to the world underground.
- Chapter Fourteen -
“Time to wake up, Rose?” the voice said, deep and loud in the empty room as someone flicked their fingers in my face. “Rose, are you with us?”
The far away voice echoed again around the immeasurable walls of the vast circular dungeon room, hitting the high ceiling and spinning around the apex. The smell of fetid air lingered closely to my face as it itched in my nostrils. The footsteps grew closer to me again, one set only and I jerked awake, pulling my relenting eyelids open. The blurred shadows gained focus slowly in the dimly lit space, I tried to sense what danger now loomed around me but my body felt numb, worn out with exhaustion.
I lifted my head, wincing and stretching the aching muscles in my neck. I blinked open my eyes fully and saw Aiden Deverill standing in front of me.
“You awake?” he said. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m okay,” I said hoarsely, and tried to reach my hand out but I couldn’t move.
I peered down. I was sitting in an old metal chair, my hands were tied and crossed behind my back and I felt rough ties clamping my ankles to the chair legs. I tried to move again, twisting my wrists to see if there was any give in the bindings but I was stuck fast.
“What is this?” I cried at him but he showed no remorse at my outburst.
“I had to tie you down, Rose. It’s for your own protection, for now, anyway,” he said with a laugh in his voice. His attempt at joking was lost on me. This wasn’t funny in the slightest.
“Where’s Morgan?” I said as I tried to twist round.
“Oh, he’s over there, would you like to see him?” Aiden picked the chair corner up and twisted me round. Morgan lay on the floor, his hands and legs bound, like mine. He looked at me with a pained expression and tried to murmur “I’m sorry,” but he couldn’t raise his head from the floor.
Aiden moved my chair back to its original position, as I peered around the room to gain some perspective. Ahead of me, behind Aiden were three tunnel entrances. Another was behind me, most likely our way in, and one was to my right. In between each tunnel entrance, grill iron gates barred storerooms and holding cells. The grim cells were dank and dark, each with a single wooden cot bed along the back wall, with no sanitation and no natural air supply. I pitied the poor souls who had lived in those cells during the war. I hoped they hadn’t suffered, or gone mad from the primitive captivity. Dust motes clung to air pockets and flew around the small wire-wrapped light bulbs, only five in total. There was no other furniture except one other chair; this wasn’t a place for meetings or even rendezvous.
This was a place where people lived out their worst fears. In the dark, alone and deprived of any social contact. Forgotten.
Aiden grabbed the other chair and sat astride it facing me. His arms rested on the chair back and he smirked. I frowned back.
I should have felt afraid but I wasn’t. For the things he’d done, for the way he’d hurt people, I should have been scared out my wit’s, but I wasn’t. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me. It was almost instinct. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt me in any way. Morgan on the other hand, well, I had no idea what he might do to Morgan.
“Let him go,” I bellowed. “He’s done nothing to you.”
He sniggered. “But he’s done something to you, and that hurts me. Now you need to hear what I have to say.”
I suddenly remembered Mira, lying in the hospital bed.
“I can’t believe you have the gall to sit in front of me right now,” I said through gritted teeth. “If I wasn’t tied to this chair I’d smack you so hard for what you did to Mira. She didn’t deserve that.”
He looked shocked at my confrontation and sprang back from the chair. “It wasn’t me driving. I had no idea.”
“No? Would you care to visit her in hospital, in a neck brace with a dislocated shoulder, would you care to see her then?” I shouted, the fury came back and I flickered again, my body not yet healed.
“Oh Rose, would you calm down please? This room’s already been lit up like a Christmas tree thanks to you. It wasn’t me driving the car, okay? Ben’s friend, Simon, borrowed it when I was out. I wouldn’t have done that to Mira, Daisy told me about the accident.”
“Why should I believe you? You’re just a liar. A bully who throws people out of their houses and kills small children for their own petty pleasure. Guess you didn’t think I knew that, did you?” I spat back.
He looked repentant for a second. “I had no doubt that you would know. This town’s full of people telling tales on each other because they have nothing better to do. It’s always easier to believe the gossip than the truth. Well I’m telling you the truth.”
“So, you’re not sorry for what you did. You don’t regret it,” I glanced at him sideways. If I could have thrown daggers with my eyes I would have done.
“Regret? You speak to me of regret, Rose? You have no idea how much I regret my past actions. Those regrets live with me every single day. I did my time, and I served my sentence in prison. And you know something? Even now, even today I still see the face of Amelia McCaw in front of me. But it doesn’t change anything because in a small town like this, to the people here, I will always be guilty. You can’t change people, Rose, no matter what you do.”
I could hear Morgan shuffling and scratching behind me.
“Don’t you dare talk about my sister. You ended that right when you ended her life, you piece of—”
“Oh, stow it, McCaw. I’ve heard it all before,” Aiden sat again. “You see what I mean, Rose? How can I say ‘I’m sorry’ to her family? Even when I try to I get it thrown back at me.”
Morgan was relentless. “Because you think you’re so high and mighty being Ben Deverill’s grandson, you think you’re better than us. One single ‘I’m sorry’ doesn’t cut it. You took away her life, but you’re still here. Walking and talking like a normal person. Well, you’re not. You’re not worth the crap on my shoe. Keep your apologies for someone who cares.”
“Okay, McCaw, seeing as you won’t pipe down, let’s talk about you,” he shuffled his chair so he could see both of us clearly. “Let’s talk about how you’ve lied to Rose.”
“Deverill, don’t you dare,” Morgan shouted. “This is not the time.”
“What do you mean? Lied to me about what?” I spluttered. Morgan wouldn’t lie to me, we trusted each other.
“Rose, do you remember when I visited you at the picnic. I told you to be careful who you befriended, that some would betray you.”
“I remember, and someone did. Mira got hurt because of it,” I said.
“Aiden, I’m warning you” Morgan yelled.
“Rose. What if I said, it was everyone? Everyone you know, in your whole life has betrayed you.”
I sat still, my body froze. What was he saying?
He continued. “Let’s start with your family. Where are they?”
I heard Morgan mutter something like “For gods sake.”
“Daisy’s probably told you. My parents are in the Middle East, and my sister is in Manchester still.”
“How would you feel if I told you that none of it was true? That it was all a lie,” he leaned forward to see the hurt flash in my eyes. “I’m telling you the truth, aren’t I McCaw?” he leaned over to see if Morgan had taken the bait.
“She’s doesn’t deserve this, she’s not ready,” Morgan yelled.
“Well I think she is. I think she deserves to know the truth about who she is. Why her life has all been a web of lies. Hey, I’m the only person that’s ever been honest with her,” he flung out his arms in gesture.
“You’re despicable. I hate you so much,” Morgan cried. “Leave it now, while you still can.”
“You know what, Rose? I’ve had enough of this, we need to talk without all of these constant interruptions,” he sat again then yelled a word I didn’t know but it sounded like “Shipilé!”
A young man Aid
en’s age ran from one of the tunnel entrances to stand by Aiden.
“Yes, sir?”
“Please gag him, Spencer. But don’t hurt him,” he pointed to Morgan. “And bring him over here. I want him to see Rose when I tell her everything.”
“Yes, sir.”
To my left I watched Spencer prop Morgan on the floor against the side wall. He protested noisily, kicking his bound feet as Spencer applied a material gag to his mouth tying it behind his head.
“Do you want me to stay, sir?” Spencer asked, once finished in his task.
“No, leave us. Just make sure we don’t get interrupted again.”
Spencer left as quickly as he arrived down the centre tunnel behind Aiden’s head. I strayed a glance at Morgan again, who had his eyes fixed on me.
“Tell me where my family is?” I spat out at Aiden.
Aiden lifted his finger, pointing it at Morgan who shook his head.
“They’re all in his house. His proper house, that is. Mum, Dad and Amy, all together in this very town. They’ve all deceived you, Rose.”
“No, I don’t believe you!”
“No?” he looked at Morgan. “Tell her, McCaw. Are they there or not?”
I scowled at Morgan. “Morgan, please tell me it’s not true?” I saw a tear fall from Morgan’s eye, but it didn’t help with what I was hearing.
He gave me a small nod, and I winced. After all I had said, this afternoon especially, I couldn’t comprehend it fully. It didn’t sink in, and I began to feel light headed.
Daisy would have known, Morgan already knew. And Aiden knew. How far did this lie spread? To Mira or Hannah, whom I trusted with anything?
I pinched my face, the reality dawning and spat at Morgan. “How could you? After all I said about missing my family? You knew, and you said nothing?”
Morgan hung his head at my words, and he didn’t look in my direction for a while.
Aiden continued. “All your life, you’ve been moved from pillar to post. You think it was all because of your fathers work?”
I nodded.
“Did you ever visit his office? Or have family barbecues for his work colleagues? Did any of them ever visit your house?”
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